Promises We Made at Seventeen のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 91 - チャプター 98

(Her POV)Visibility has a sound.People think it’s noise—voices, notifications, attention—but it’s not. It’s pressure. A low, persistent hum that settles into your bones and makes stillness feel like resistance.I feel it the moment I step into the office the next morning.Nothing has changed.And everything has.The building is the same—neutral walls, functional furniture, the intentional blandness of a place designed to disappear behind productivity. But the way people look up when I pass is new. Subtle. Fractional. The kind of glance that doesn’t linger long enough to be rude, but lasts long enough to register curiosity.Not about me, exactly.About proximity.That’s how visibility spreads. It radiates outward from a source until even those standing slightly adjacent begin to glow.I sit at my desk and open my laptop, resisting the instinct to check the news. I already know what I’ll find. Commentary has multiplied overnight, evolving from cautious analysis into speculative narrat

(Her POV)The first fracture isn’t loud.That’s what surprises me.No emails marked urgent. No meetings suddenly appearing on the calendar. No panicked phone calls or frantic clarifications.Just a shift.Subtle. Almost courteous.The kind of shift that happens when people decide—quietly—where they stand.I notice it in the wording of responses. In the way my framework is cited with qualifiers now, my name paired with phrases like contextual application and subject to interpretation. I notice it in the way my calendar starts to fill with requests from people who never asked my opinion before, who frame their questions carefully, as if testing how much agreement they can extract without committing to alignment.They are mapping the terrain.Seeing where the ground is firm.Seeing where it isn’t.I don’t correct them.Correction invites negotiation. Negotiation invites dilution.Instead, I do something simpler—and far more unsettling to them.I document.Every meeting summary is sent in

(Her POV)Visibility changes the temperature of a room.Not immediately. Not dramatically. It works its way in slowly, like heat creeping under a door, until suddenly you realize everyone is sweating and no one wants to be the first to say why.The venue they choose is deliberate.Neutral. Professional. Too polished to feel safe.A panel discussion, officially framed as a progress update. Unofficially, it’s a test—of composure, alignment, and narrative control.By the time we arrive, the room is already full.Not just stakeholders. Observers. Analysts. People whose job it is to decide what this moment means once it leaves the room.I can feel it humming beneath my skin as I take my seat beside him.Cameras. Microphones. Carefully placed water glasses.This isn’t about answers.It’s about framing.The moderator opens with pleasantries, context, a rehearsed neutrality that pretends we all arrived here by accident.Then the questions begin.They start safely.Process. Vision. Outcomes.W

(Her POV)Defection never feels dramatic in the moment it happens.It feels… administrative.That’s the part no one tells you.The morning starts normally enough. Coffee cooling beside my laptop. Messages queued but unanswered. The familiar hum of anticipation that now lives under everything I do.Then an email lands.Not addressed to me directly.Copied.That’s how you know it matters.Subject: Governance Alignment — Interim DecisionI open it slowly.The language is impeccable. Polite. Thoughtful. Constructed to sound inevitable rather than intentional.After careful consideration…In the interest of institutional continuity…To reduce strain and ensure collective ownership…And then the sentence that changes everything:Effective immediately, oversight authority will be reassigned.Reassigned.Not reviewed.Not shared.Removed.My name still appears—technically—but repositioned. Advisory. Consultative. Non-binding.They didn’t sideline me.They hollowed the role out and left the sh